Installations for performing medical analyses comprise appliances referred to as “analysis automatons” or “analysis robots” that enable certain operations that would otherwise be performed manually to be performed automatically. The term “medical analysis” is used to mean a process consisting in treating at least one sample taken from a human being or an animal. By way of example, such samples may be samples of body fluids (blood, urine, lymph, saliva, etc.), of cells, or of biological or organ tissues. As examples of medical analyses, mention may be made of blood group tests, tests searching for antibodies, tests for determining compatibility between a donor and a receiver, etc.
Examples of medical analysis installations are described in Documents U.S. Pat. No. 6,162,399, JP 2010/054232, EP 2 145 685, and . . . . All of those installations make use of Cartesian type robots. The term “Cartesian type robot” or “Cartesian robot” is used to designate a robot having only prismatic joints for moving its terminal member (or tool). In other words, in the linkage of the robot, the three degrees of freedom between the base (or stand) of the robot and its terminal member are made possible by at least three prismatic joints.
Cartesian robots, and more particularly those having a terminal member that is not jointed, have the particular feature of making it simpler to model the workspace by taking account only of the positions of objects in that space, independently of their orientations. The simplifying nature of that approach assumes that the orientations of the objects that are to be managed are known in advance, unchanging, and reproducible on each installation. Thus, in order to ensure that the movements of a Cartesian robot relative to the objects it is to manage are accurate, it is necessary for each installation to be set up with great care to ensure that the objects for managing are correctly oriented relative to the Cartesian robot. This requirement makes it significantly more complicated to set up the installation.
There thus exists a need for a solution that enables such drawbacks to be resolved, at least in part.